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Times Standard top front 11/30/98 North Coast crimes unpunished Northern California last in environmental charges By Martha Mendoza The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO - Every year the federal government sends people to jail for damaging the environment - everywhere but in Northern California, where for years federal prosecutors have declined to file criminal charges in almost every case. The U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco, responsible for enforcing federal law from the once-pristine redwood forests at the Oregon border to the protected waters of the Monterey Bay, ranks last in the country for prosecuting environmental crimes. Instead, an Associated Press review of Justice Department computer records has found that the office used its discretion to focus on drugs, immigration and white collar crime, exasperating federal pollution cops who have watched their efforts go nowhere. “This has been a source of frustration, and we never got used to it. It was like being a bump on a log," said Dave Wilma, the EPA's special agent in charge in San Francisco between 1984 and 1997. "We brought a number of cases that we worked for a long time that never went anywhere," said Wilma, now with the EPA in Seattle. "I can't tell you how many times we would go to the prosecutors and guess what? They're involved in a dope trial for the next six weeks." Only 12.5 percent of the environmental cases referred to the region's federal prosecutors over the last seven years have resulted in criminal charges, and not one polluter has gone to jail, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse in Washington D.C. That's well below the national average of 41 percent, according to TRAC, which has processed Justice Department data since 1992. It's not because Northern California lacks environmental crimes. “There's theft of timber from federal lands, intentional violations of the Clean Water Act, logging on endangered lands and more," said Nathaniel Lawrence, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources and Defense Council n San Francisco. he Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the Coast Guard and other agencies routinely bring evidence of crimes to the U.S. Attorney's office. San Francisco-based environmental groups, from the mainstream Sierra Club to the militant Earth First!, also clamor to put polluters behind bars. But federal prosecutors turned away 28 out of 32 environmental cases in Northern California since 1992, including trucking compa- nies dumping sewage in San Francisco Bay, pulp mills pumping waste into the Pacific and nuclear power plants cooking their books. The four cases U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi decided to pursue, all related to dumping waste into the Pacific Ocean, resulted in fines and convictions on lesser charges in 1994. In contrast, California's other three U.S. attorneys have pursued about half their environmental crime referrals in court. And Southern Florida, where the Everglades suffer from development and fragile coral reefs have been harmed by polluters, prosecutors have led the nation, pursuing more than 25 environmental crime cases a year in the last three years alone. That's more than half the cases referred to them. Before he was replaced by U.S. attorney Robert Mueller in September, Yamaguchi suffered a high turnover of prosecutors, filed a declining number of charges overall and encountered problems in some major cases. He has not returned to legal practice and did not return calls from the Associated Press. Mueller doesn't dispute the poor record, and said one of his top priorities is to begin enforcing federal environmental crime laws. While Yamaguchi had no one in his office dedicated to criminal environmental cases, Mueller has brought in prosecutor Herb Johnson from Washington, D.C., to focus exclusively in this area. "Corporations and individuals in this region need to realize that if they break the laws or lie about discharges or other violations they will be prosecuted," Mueller said. Environmental activists hope he follows through. “There is plenty of work to be done pursuing criminal violations of the nation’s environmental laws in Northern California,” said Lawrence Activist Susan Stansbury, executive director of Bay Area Action in Palo Alto, has spent the past decade trying to get federal prosecutors to file charges against lumber companies harvesting ancient redwoods in Northern California, to no avail. State regulators and environmental activists have been forced to pursue civil cases instead. “But these are crimes,” said Stansbury. “It is devastating for the environment when the laws aren’t enforced. The dearth of federal criminal prosecutions doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any environmental enforcement in Northern California. Federal regulators have monitored, investigated and fined polluters. State prosecutors have put some behind bars. And the U.S. Attorney has brought civil, rather than criminal, charges against individuals and corporations, enforced with fines and new restrictions. Nationally, the Justice Department prosecutes about 380 people and a year for allegedly violating environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Laurie Dueker, the head of EPA enforcement for California, Nevada, Hawaii and Arizona, said her agents became so discouraged by the lack of action in Northern California that they gave up trying with the U.S. Attorney's office. Recently, however, she got a call from Johnson urging her to bring him some work. "Historically, we got so used to being turned down in San Francisco that we just turned to other areas," she said. "Now we hear they're changing their attitude, and we're ready to work with them." Coast Guard investigators know where they can start: A 2,300-gallon oil spill just outside San Francisco Bay on Sept. 27 that killed more than 100 seabirds and smeared miles of San Mateo County beaches with tar balls. Coast Guard investigators tracked the oil to a Liberian registered tanker and boarded the ship off Central America. David M. Walsh P.O. Box 903 Redway, CA 95560 Office and Fax(707) 923-3015 Home (707) 986-1644
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